“They can’t beat the best.”

Affiliation: Maximal

Function: Jungle Patrol

Japanese Beast Wars name: 

Alternate mode: Cheetah 
Acinonyx jubatus

First Cartoon Appearance: 
Beast Wars,
Part 1, episode 1

First Comic Appearance: 
none, in this form

The following text is an excerpt from the official Beast Wars Story Bible, written by Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio.  It's from a draft from Dec. 1995, before the first show aired...

MAXIMAL CHARACTER PROFILE  

Name: CHEETOR 
Function: Scout
Beast Form: Cheetah
Robotic Form: Black and Orange Humanoid

Weaponry: Quasar cannon (hand held), Cybertronic beams

(eyes), mist projector (belly mounted, can produce a mist of magnetic particles designed to disrupt circuitry)

Skills: Speed, Agility, Marksmanship, Track, Jungle Survival, Acrobatics, Pilot, Driver

Interests/Hobbies:  Cheetor is quite fond of rock n' roll music, anything that goes fast and coconut milk.

Attitude: Cheetor is the teenager of the group.  He is impulsive, mischievous, restless, a furry ball of restless energy, always wanting to run, to move, to hunt.  His words hurry all over themselves and he tends to say a lot in a very little amount of time.  Optimus always understands him, Rhinox never.  Cheetor is the Scout of the Maximals, his keen eye for tracking and his astonishing speed (in both robot and beast form) enabling him to get into and out of most any situation.  He is also intensely loyal to the Maximals and will risk his own life for any one of them, even DinoBot.

Cheetor is very enthusiastic, in fact sometimes he is too enthusiastic.  You might think of him as the prime cheerleader of the Maximals, encouraging them when they're up, supporting them when they're down. He is also very sure of himself and this gets him into lots of trouble.

Cheetor's motor-mouth mode of speech is peppered with slang terms only he seems to understand ( we will create these terms for him).  He is not a babbler -- his speech may be quick, but he always has something to say.  He also likes to sing snatches of rock n' roll tunes whenever the feeling strikes him.

Though Cheetor will be played as younger than the rest of the Maximals, he should not be played as some brain dead Surfer Dude.

RELATIONSHIPS:
Optimus Primal and Cheetor have a quasi father-son relationship.  Cheetor admires Optimus greatly though at times he resents his advice and his attempts to protect Cheetor from their enemies.  Nevertheless he thinks Optimus is the spottiest and will go to great lengths to impress him.

DinoBot dislikes everything about Cheetor, his enthusiasm, his singing, his talk etc.  Cheetor is not so fond of DinoBot either but since Optimus feels the former Predacon is needed, Cheetor tries constantly to be friendly toward him, often with comically outrageous consequences.

Rattrap gets exasperated with "the kid" on occasion but otherwise they have a friendly relationship.  Cheetor admires Rattrap's street-wise savvy and wry humor, though he never gets his jokes.

Rhinox is simply too slow for Cheetor to deal with.  They are exact opposites, Cheetor doing everything in life at Mach 10 and Rhinox placidly going with the flow.  It's not that he doesn't like Rhinox but rather that he is too restless to deal with him on a regular basis.

Like a bolt of greased lightning, Cheetor strikes fast  and strikes hard.  Quiet and confident with incredible reflexes, he is equally efficient when battling in robot mode or in his artificially enhanced organic Earth form.  Constantly stalks the jungle in search of Predacon enemies, daring them to challenge him and his laser powered quasar cannon!

Strength: 6.0
Intelligence: 5.0
Speed: 10.0
Endurance: 8.0
Rank: 6.0
Courage: 9.0
Firepower: 7.0
Skill: 7.0 

Other Appearances:  Beast Wars: Cheetor played a very important role throught the Beast Wars and in Beast Machines.  In fact, he may have made more appearances in different forms than even Optimus Primal.  This was his original form.  This toy was released in several versions all the same except a change in eye color.  The "blue eye, rock box Cheetor" was the first toy released and most rare.  The same toy was released in subsequent months and years with green eyes, with green eyes with pupil and red eyes.

Bibliography of significant appearances:

episode 1. Beast Wars, part 1, fresh after the Axalon crash on pre-historic Earth  receiving his new cheetah form, it is the youthful Cheetor who rushes off to explore, leading to the first confrontation between Maximals and Predacons on Earth.

episode 3, The Web: After failing at a chance to obtain a laser canon which also crash landed on Earth, Cheetor disobeys another order of Optimus and finds himself caught in the web of Tarantulas.

episode 4, Equal Measures:  Cheetor makes ammends following his previous debacle by saving the day when he finds himself trapped inside the Predacon base.

episode 15, The Spark: Cheetor stalls Predacon attackers as Rhinox tries to save the spark of a fellow Maximal.

Cheetor plays a role, though not quite as pivotal in remaining episodes of Beast Wars season 1. 

Other appearances, continued: Along with Rattrap, Cheetor absorbed the power of the quantum surge following the season 1 finale and found himself in a new Transmetal form in 1998 (sorry, no character page yet).  He took on a Transmetal 2 form in season 3 before the Beast Wars concluded in 1999.  He was reformatted by the oracle of the Allspark in 2000 into his Beast Machines form.  In that same year also featured a " Beast Rider" form and the first ever "Supreme" Class figure, Supreme Cheetor.  In 2001 he took on his final form in Beast Machines as " Night Slash Cheetor" toy.  This same toy was later released in a more show matching color scheme in the Transformers Universe line.  In 2003 his Transmetal form was retooled and released as TF: Armada Cheetor (I yes still think of this as the same Cheetor, pre-Beast Wars under the influence of Unicron.)  The Botcon 2006 exclusive figure set finally gave us a look at what Cheetor looked like on Cybertron prior to the Axalon's fateful crash on Earth, a recolor of the Cybertron Clocker toy.  He was also released again in 2007 as a Beast Machines Titanium toy.

Image below shows Cheetor's crazy alternate crazy beast head:

Links to more toy pictures:

robot mode
full body shot, outdoors1b
weapons ready, outdoors1c
full body shot, flash lighting1f
cheetah mode
side angle, belly wepon removed 2b
front angle 2d
head close-up 2e

robot mode 1c
robot mode 1d
robot mode 1e
robot mode 1f
robot mode 1g
robot mode 1k
robot mode 1l
robot mode 1m
robot mode 1n
robot mode 1p
robot mode 1q
robot mode 1r
robot mode 1t
robot mode 1u
robot mode 1w
robot mode 1x
robot mode 1y
robot mode 1z
robot mode 1z1
robot mode 1z3

More pictures you say?  Okay, you asked for it!  Animated cartoon stills below:

seen here before abord the axalon, before taking his familiar cheetah form
robot mode 1a

beast mode 2a
beast mode 2b
beast mode 2c
beast mode 2d
beast mode 2e
beast mode 2f
beast mode 2g
beast mode 2i
beast mode 2j
beast mode 2k
beast mode 2l
beast mode 2m
beast mode 2n
beast mode 2p
beast mode 2q
beast mode 2ar
beast mode 2s
beast mode 2u